I am not sure that his father's neglect was not on the whole better for Gibbie than would have been the kindness of such a father persistently¹ embodying² itself. But the picture of Sir George, by the help of whisky and the mild hatching oven of Mistress Croale's parlour, softly breaking from the shell of the cobbler, and floating a mild gentleman in the air of his lukewarm imagination, and poor wee Gibbie trotting⁴ outside in the frosty dark of the autumn night, through which the moon keeps staring down, vague and disconsolate⁵, is hardly therefore the less pathetic. Under the window of the parlour where the light of revel⁶ shone radiant through a red curtain, he would stand listening for a moment, then, darting⁸ off a few yards suddenly and swiftly like a scared bird, fall at once into his own steady trot³—up the lane and down, till he reached the window again, where again he would stand and listen. Whether he made this departure and return twenty or a hundred times in a night, he nor any one else could have told. Sometimes he would for a change extend his trot along the Widdiehill, sometimes along the parallel Vennel, but never far from Jink Lane and its glowing window. Never moth⁹ haunted lamp so persistently. Ever as he ran, up this pavement and down that, on the soft-sounding soles of his bare feet, the smile on the boy's face grew more and more sleepy, but still he smiled and still he trotted¹⁰, still paused at the window, and still started afresh.